Time is on the side of the Russians in Ukraine and the Chinese on pretty much anything else when it comes to confronting the US empire.
But ever since the ceasefire in Lebanon and the fall of Assad I can’t help but feel that the Palestinian cause is getting worse every day. No one is lifting a finger for them except the Yemenis and it only seems that the Zionist fucks are getting closer to their objectives.
Civil war in “Israel” when? True Promise 3 when (lol)?
It doesn’t help that some of the loudest voices cheering for Assad’s fall where Palestinians and that sectarism is strong against Shia’s…
Define imperialism
im·pe·ri·al·ism /imˈpirēəˌlizəm/ noun
a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through diplomacy or military force. ie. Russia ever since Vladimir Putin took over.
American analysts, including Biden earlier in his career, have long foretold that the threat of Ukraine joining NATO would provoke an invasion by Russia.
Why did Biden later claim the invasion was expansionist? The same reason Bush claimed Iraq had WMDs. The same reason Obama claimed the Libyan state was about to commit a genocide, or that the Syrian state had used chemical weapons when evidence instead pointed to the Al Nusra front.
In reality, Russia invaded Ukraine because Russia is scared of NATO, because NATO is an arm of American power, and Ukraine joining NATO would put American power on the border close to Moscow. This response was so predictable that analysts have been forecasting it literally for decades.
America prolongs the war to weaken Russia, and indirectly China, because this strengthens America’s hold over the global south.
Ummm…no. No one actually wants to be fighting Russia. This is just made up bullshit by Russian propagandists, to justify their imperialist agenda.
https://www.iir.cz/lies-provocations-or-myths-pretexts-nato-and-the-ukraine-crisis
I regret spending 30 seconds skimming that article.
Key quote that I was looking for, which invalidates the whole thing:
LOLOL, be serious!
What else would you call a mutual defense treaty? The fact that Russia is the only country in Eastern Europe that poses a consistent threat to its neighbors, isn’t because NATO keeps expanding. NATO keeps expanding because Russia continues to invade its neighbors. Eastern European countries wouldn’t be seeking NATO’s protection, if they didn’t think there was a genuine threat to their sovereignty so close to their borders.
How many countries has Russia invaded since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991? How many countries have NATO members invaded since that same time? What was the reasoning behind those invasions?
Perhaps you have a different answer, but here’s mine: Russia has invaded Ukraine (for 10 years, ongoing) and Georgia (for about a week?) since that time, both for legitimate defensive/strategic reasons as I have explained elsewhere in this thread. NATO members (USA) have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan since that time, Iraq for absolutely no good reason for over 8 years, and Afghanistan as an overreaction to 9/11 for nearly 20 years, where a limited intervention to capture Osama Bin Laden would have sufficed. Maybe I have missed some items, but from my perspective, NATO looks like a bigger threat than Russia.
That’s just “whataboutism”. The US is bad. We all get that. But that doesn’t justify other countries also doing bad shit.
When the US went after Assad in Syria, I was glad that Russia stepped in and stood up to them. Why? Because regime change politics are bad. No one should have the right to unilaterally decide who’s in charge of another country. Period.
So, when Russia decides they should be allowed to just waltz into Ukraine and pull the same shit…I am equally glad that someone stepped in and stood up to them. Why? Because if it’s bad when one country does it…it’s equally bad when another country does it. Period.
How in any conceivable way do you rationalize invading other countries for “legitimate defensive / strategic reasons”? Or, do you also agree that the US can do that too, as long as they have those “defensive / strategic” excuses for being hostile towards other countries?
No, it’s directly and logically countering your argument.
Your exact quote I was responding to:
Please provide evidence to demonstrate how Russia is more dangerous to NATO than NATO is to Russia.
Regarding your other questions, I already explained my rationale in another part of this post. I would have much preferred that Russia would have found some other solution to address the existential threat that NATO poses to them, but I can understand their reasoning for doing it this way. They made the calculation that offense would be the best defense, which is valid at any level of self-defense.
I’m not making a moral argument. I’m making a realistic geopolitics argument. If you want a hypothetical involving the US, I have a perfect one that parallels what has happened: what exactly do you think the US would do if Mexico were already in a full military alliance with Russia and China expressly created to be anti-US, and Canada announced that it was planning to join that same alliance? Please answer this question.
Edit: to make the opening less confrontational.
What a useful definition of imperialism! It’s definitely not just going to include… literally all nation-states in history. The imperialist state of Mexico is brutally trying to grow its power and influence by fighting the Cartels!
edit: lol, given your definition, Hamas is an imperialist power for trying to extend Palestine’s influence into Israel. I guess I need to take a principled anti-imperialist position and condemn Hamas imperialism.
Yes, a dictionary definition.
My favorite act of imperialism has got to be k-pop.
the bourgeoisie are increasingly compelled by a falling rate of profit to use their dominance of the state apparatus to open new markets or access to resource extraction.
or you can keep your useless definition that illuminates nothing and applies to every state conflict in history, sure.
liberal voice not reading that essay
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Lol! Imperialism had been around for centuries before Marx, my friend. There have been Empires going all the way back to the dawn of recorded history.
And Lenin’s description fits modern day Russia to the letter…minus the stuff where he projects its inevitable future manifestations. Currently, there are no Empires that have achieved global dominance…not even the US. So, if that’s the only definition of “Imperialism” that you think is valid, then there are no Empires at all.
Correct. What Lenin is attempting to describe, is how capitalist imperialism functions. What are the fundamental characteristics of the imperialism we observe, what makes it tick? See, contrary to the metaphysical view of the world, that sustains that history is an eternally recurring cycle where humanity is consigned to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, Marxists understand that real change does happen. History is a living, moving thing. It is fluid. The systems of the world as it exists today are fundamentally, qualitatively different to what they were 500 years ago, even if empires existed back then. Therefore, it is germane to the task of anti-imperialists to do a serious materialist analysis of how capitalist empire works, why does it form, what are its contradictions, and how it can be defeated.
For more material that explains that philosophical difference between the recurrent, cyclical view of the world and the historical materialist view of the world, read the first section in Mao’s essay On Contradiction and Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism. You might be skeptical to read those (I bet it might feel like I’m asking you to read Mein Kampf or the Turner Diaries) but I think if you give them 1 minute you’ll probably start to see why the tankies are addicted to reading theory. It’s really like a super power.
No? Did you miss the part about how Lenin wrote Imperialism in 1916 and was describing how the world was being sortied up and divided among the imperialist powers at the time? That meant the European empires and the nascent American empire. After the world wars, i.e. the most important inter-imperialist conflict in the stage of history we’re in, America successfully became the leader of the capitalist world. There no longer was a meaningful division per se, because the US was in power over all of it. That’s what the end of Bretton Woods in 1971 was, the US confidently saying the world belongs to them.
The end of the Cold War gave birth to the Russian Federation as a strange, hybrid creature of a previously socialist economy now under the hands of corrupt oligarchs. It is certainly not an imperialist power, and has always been excluded from the organs of imperialism that Lenin was talking about. If Russia was an imperialist state, it would be sitting in the IMF and World Bank to extract wealth from the Global South together with the US. But the clever bastards like the Dulles brothers and Kissinger played a fantastic game of chess in the 20th century specifically to make sure the USSR, and later the Russian Federation, would be encircled and excluded from the “International Community” aka American Empire.
Man, that’s just what Americans like to think…but it isn’t actually true. That effectively removes any concept of agency from the rest of the world. That kind of thinking lacks any semblance of nuanced reality. We live in an interconnected world, so no one is truly a fully independent nation anymore. We all interact with each other in some way, for better or worse. But that doesn’t mean that we are all having our strings pulled by one nation, just because it has an outsized degree of influence in the world.
Russia is no different. Claiming that they aren’t imperialistic, just because they aren’t as successful as other imperialists, is also laughable non-logic. If it quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck…it’s just another kind of duck. Putin’s obvious intent on bringing the previous Soviet states back under his control, is overtly imperialistic in nature. And make no mistake…it is dually motivated by nostalgia for Russia’s imperialist past, as well as its current financial benefit.
All you have to do, to confirm this, is listen to the man talk about Russian history. He isn’t idealizing Socialism. He’s idealizing the Russian Empire. He is as far from being a socialist as any oligarch can be. All he wants, is singular control over all the power, influence and capital that he can get his hands on…and by any means necessary.
THAT is what actual imperialism looks like. Not some naive, fictional representation from over a century ago.
Imperialism is what removes agency from the world! The working masses toil at the mercy of finance capitalists in the west…with the exception of sufficiently powerful states capable of resisting the incursion of finance capital into their societies. Think China, Russia, Iran. To oppose the incursion of finance capital is the only means to exercise agency.
It is not a meme that the United States dictates to the vast majority of the globe what their policies will be, at least those that affect the export of finance capital and prevent the exploitation of its working population by foreign capitalists. It is the way the world works.
The US lIterally prevents the entire world from doing trade with Cuba. It is a fucking miracle that socialist projects like Cuba, Vietnam, and the DPRK haven’t collapsed under the pressure of imperialist coercion, whether via finance capital export or military force. This is the agency being expressed. These are amongst the few sovereign nations in the global south.
Do you think that Africans, South Americans, and Southeast Asians are incapable of developing on their own? How do you explain the vast disparity in wealth and material conditions between the west and the global south? Are they people who desire to work in utter dogshit conditions, only exporting natural resources in exchange for advanced goods produced by more civilized peoples? Do you think that the comprador regimes across the global south is an exercise of democracy? Do you think that all these countries would continue to voluntarily elect those who consistently sell out their countrymen for personal gain if not for undue influence of finance capital?
Or perhaps it is the export of finance capital that produces and maintains the conditions for unequal exchange that never permit investment in means of production that would allow for their societies to develop? If you cannot develop the means to produce goods on your own, your trade relationships will inevitably consist of those where raw materials are forever exchanged for advanced technologies, guaranteeing they are never produced domestically.
We do. But the relationship is not of a deeply interconnected graph as your presentation suggests. It closely resembles a hierarchical tree with maybe a few edges connecting nodes further from tnon-logic
Laughable non logic is the proposition that imperialism is merely and exclusively the exertion of military might over another. The Leninist criteria isn’t as flimsy as who can exert their will by brute military force. Your definition of imperialism, invasion or war lol, is merely noticing the byproducts of our definition, reducing war to simply an intent to conquer, never a result of protecting legitimate material interests.
Russia has no real finance capital to export. Where are the Russian banks exercising their influence? Where are Russian capitalists dictating foreign policy of other nations?..in Russia! Their finance capital has no hegemonic status, just Russian capitalists running roughshod over the Russian people.
It is not being exported. Where is the Russian IMF or World Bank? When was the last time a Russian was heading either of those institutions? It dont quack, it don’t waddle. Maybe it has feathers, but it’s not a fucking duck!
Putin’s obvious intent is not letting the Russian bourgeoisie take a big fat L from the western finance capitalists, and the resulting effects on Russian conditions. Russia would have peaceful relations with its neighbors if not for the US constantly encroaching by fomenting coups and unrest so it can move its strategic weapons ever closer to Moscow.
Russia does not want the Ukraine. He doesn’t want the mineral deposits, he doesn’t want the natural gas reserves, he doesn’t want the fertile farmland…all of which exist in FAR greater quantities within existing Russian territory. He probably wants Crimea for access to sea trade routes, but that’s about all the territorial ambition Russia really wants…to not be cut out of global trade.
You don’t think we know this? Everyone on Hexbear recognizes Putin as a reactionary scumbag who is opportunistically on the side of anti-imperialism.
Not really. Resisting Western hegemony is necessarily a top goal of any socialist project. Sometimes interests align between people with radically different ideological underpinnings. We don’t care that he has different views so long as he stands in solidarity with the one goal necessary to achieve all our other goals.
This view is naïve and cartoonish. Putin is not a fucking Marvel villain. He simply wants him and his capitalist cronies to not be squashed under the thumb of western finance capital, a desire that also happens to benefit the Russian people who experienced the despair and abject suffering that occurred last time after the fall of the Soviet Union.
We don’t even fucking like the guy at all, but you libs and your fairytale views on geopolitics are forcing us to go to bat for the guy and the Russian state because we someone has to actually exist within reality and explain things in a world where magic, opinions, and personal ambitions don’t dictate the course of history.
Valid. It’s true that the United States didn’t decide what I had for breakfast this morning. But “outsized degree of influence” is definitely an understatement. The US is the wold hegemon. It sucks to admit if you’re not American (I am not) but the world does revolve around the US. Every country needs to sell the US* their commodities to earn USD so they can buy oil, which can only be bought in USD, or US food exports, which are a major dependency for most developing economies that have turned to only farming cash crops. Jason Hickel points out that the Global South contributes 90% of the world economy’s productive labor, yet receives 21% of the global income [source]. So how does this happen? It’s clearly not just that the US has outsized influence, it has a role that is entirely distinct and of a different historical character to just “outsized influence.” It is an imperialist superpower, with unipolar hegemonic prevalence over all world systems.
Ok cool, a century and a half of Marxist analysis defeated by “if it quacks like a duck and swims like a duck.” I’m trying to meet you halfway here, if you brush off any kind of systemic analysis with ridiculous truisms then there’s no point to the conversation.
Russia is expansionist, although the current war in Ukraine is not of an expansionist character, as all states are. The nature of the nation-state is to be oppressive, expansionist, violent, etc etc. Putin is a chauvinist because he is the lead of a nation-state that is engaged in conflict and therefore holds up an imaginary ideal that it defends, that’s what heads of state do in times of conflict. These criticisms have been made for a long time (in fact, all the way back to Engels and later Lenin iterating on Engels) and they’re universal to all nation-states. So you aren’t giving us anything actionable that we can do about imperialism as you describe it, just bad vibes that are icky.
Why is Lenin’s analysis naive and fictional? And isn’t the fact that every prediction he makes in Imperialism about the development of imperialism would be vindicated by the next century of history more reason to take the theory seriously? Like, why should I trust your vibes based “quacks like a duck swims like a duck” theory of imperialism, that would actually have me believe all states are imperialist, when Lenin’s theory is what a group like the PFLP subscribes to in their real fight against imperialism?
Furthermore, you say that I’m saying Russia isn’t imperialist because they just aren’t successful as other imperialists and that somehow is a fundamentally incorrect argument. Wouldn’t it be correct to say that a rocket that burns up in the atmosphere is not a space station? If you fail to become an empire because of the conditions of the world, namely how the US has already achieved a hegemonic position, then you just aren’t an empire. That’s that. I’m not saying that there’s something different about how capital works in Russia, obviously if the conditions were different then Russia would begin exporting financial capital and exploiting the Global South as the US does. The thing is that we don’t live in an imaginary world where multilateral free market deals have created a balance of powers where the US, Russia, and some other imperialist powers are bullying around all the little guys. It really is just the US who has even successfully vassalized the other capitalist imperialist powers.
*Yes, they can also sell commodities to other countries that have USD reserves to the same end, but how do you think those countries got their reserves?
Dude. Russia is no longer a socialist country. Half a century of Marxist analysis doesn’t apply to modern day Russia. It is an autocratic oligarchy now. If you aren’t even going to acknowledge objective facts, then you aren’t arguing in good faith. Pretending like Marxist theory has any relevance to Russia’s current geopolitical role, is purely disingenuous. It cast off that mantle completely, when Putin took over. His leadership solidified its current status as an emerging imperialist state.
That’s why I said it “quacks like a duck”. If it checks all the boxes of being an imperialist state…then guess what? It is.
And that reality has absolutely nothing to do with the US’s status as also being an imperialist state. You can absolutely have more than one existing at a time. Lenin might have argued that the “GOAL” of a capitalist Empire is to achieve world dominance…and I do agree with that sentiment…but the idea that imperialism somehow doesn’t exist until that goal is achieved, is ludacris. Imperialism is identified by the way it chooses to expand its influence. And Russia.'s current actions fit that description just as well as the US.
What the hell are you talking about? Yes, of course the Russian Federation isn’t socialist, it’s capitalist. That’s why I’m using Marxist theory to describe it. What do you think Das Kapital was about? Are you under the impression that Marxism is only useful to describe communist countries?
Again this is a complete failure of reading comprehension. When Lenin was talking about imperialism in 1916 there were multiple capitalist empires. Germany was actually looking a lot stronger than the US at that point. So of course you can have more than one empire at a time, if you look at the literal definition we’ve been talking about all this time it specifically talks about how capitalist empires divide up the world among themselves. That’s not what I’m contesting.
I’m not saying imperialism can’t exist until a single empire dominates the world. I’m saying American empire won the game so rival capitalist states no longer can achieve that monopoly capitalist, exporter of finance capital position. If you go and actually read the book you might understand the economic reasons why that is, if you don’t skim through it and only read every other word as you appear to have done with my comments.
No, it really isn’t. You’re just trying to impose your vibes-based definition again, and this whole thread has shown that it’s incredibly useless. If I subscribe to your definition, I’m going to start reporting Palestine Actionists to the cops because their interventions sabotaging weapons factories have harmed Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russian imperialism. This is deeply unserious.
What no theory does to a mfer
You dogmatic tankies insist on reading books written by old white guys to derive your positions. I, an enlightened western leftist, get my positions from memes that get pushed to me by a social media algorithm designed by young white guys!
Just recently I had a guy tell me that Stalin wasn’t “real communism.” I told him up front that, despite having called himself a communist for years, he had never read any theory nor done any practice, so I didn’t consider him qualified to weigh in on the subject. He kept on going as if I hadn’t said anything.